Orange Prize – Still Not Fussed

A very long long list for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

Books March 10, 2015

How many books is too many? I confess there’s more than a little self interest involved in the question. The long list for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction has just been announced and it’s a whopping 20 books long, albeit from 165 original applicants. The prize, which was previously known as the Orange, is for a full-length novel written in english by a woman of any nationality and published in the United Kingdom.

Of course a plus for having long lists longer than the customary 10 or 12 titles is that many more authors are able to get their moment in the literary sunshine. This particularly applies to debut authors of which the long list has five including Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing, which won the Costa Prize, and Laline Paull’s dystopian The Bees. It also gives the judges the opportunity to broaden the range of work celebrated beyond what might be viewed as more “conventional” subject and style.

On the downside, I know I am not alone in liking to read as many of the contenders for

Keep Reading

Long list for Woman’s Prize for Fiction

Books March 21, 2013

Irrespective of whether you think there needs to be a separate prize just for books written by women, the 2013 list includes an impressive array of talent. It’s also a great example of the old reader’s saying “so many books, so little time.”

As would be expected, writers like Barbara Kinsolver, Michele Roberts, Hilary Mantel, Kate Atkinson, AM Holmes and Zadie Smith all make it. But there are also some intriguing less well-known writers,

Keep Reading

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

Books February 4, 2013

Dellarobia Turnbow has put on her second-hand boots and is climbing the steep wooded hillside behind her remote Appalachian home to start a love affair, “risking everything, pointing her little chin up that hill and walking unarmed into the shoot-out of whatever might be.”

But it is not the affair that is going to transform her life. Before she can even meet up with her would-be lover, she is brought to a standstill by the valley blazing “with its own internal flame” of “trees turned to fire” “a valley of lights”.

The orange that Dellarobia first thought was fire is millions and millions of orange Monarch Butterflies hanging in vast living curtains from the trees. To some locals they are unwanted intruders lying in the way of plans to raze the hillsides to earn desperately needed money. Others see them as a potential tourism attraction.

But to the scientists they are a portend of environmental disaster. The butterflies would normally be congregating in Mexico but clear felling their habitation has disrupted their life cycle. They have instead being lulled into a false sense of security by the warm summer months. And soon, the season change will create a harsh climate that will inevitable annihilate them, potential fatally disrupting the biological chain of which they are a part.

Keep Reading